System and method for meaning driven process and information management to improve efficiency, quality of work and overall customer satisfaction

ABSTRACT

A customer service system for providing enhanced guidance and resources to service agents and providing an enhance ability to select service agents that are best suited to address specific customers and specific customer needs, and methods for manufacturing and using same. The customer service system includes a system server with a semantic engine configured to analyze customer contact events and customize service agent interfaces based on determined customer needs.

BACKGROUND

For many companies, addressing the needs and concerns of its customersis important to the business process. For example, customers may want topurchase goods or services, change customer account features, voice acomplaint, ask a question about the goods or services, or troubleshootan issue with the goods or services. However, the way that customersinteract with companies has become more complex, diverse and rapidlychanging. For example, instead of relying primarily on phone calls ormail, customers now also expect to interact with companies via e-mail,text messaging, and online social media like Twitter and Facebook.

To cope with this new landscape of multi-channel customer contacts, andremain competitive in the marketplace, companies must adopt increasinglyadvanced marking and operations tools, information governance, andcustomer engagement systems. For companies with a large number ofcustomers, a call center or service center may be used to handle largevolumes of customer contacts that are received continuously. Somebusinesses have in-house service centers; whereas, others outsourceservice center needs to an outside vendor. In either case, servicecenters may employ a number of service agents that attend to customerneeds and handle contact events.

Conventionally, service agents can be tasked with handling a widevariety of customer needs and customers, which is undesirable because itrequires each service agent to receive training on handling manycustomer needs. Additionally, conventional service center systemsrequire service agents to work in complex technological environmentsthat often include simultaneously working with many different service,business and communication systems at once. Unfortunately, this oftenresults in the service agents having only minimal proficiency inservicing any given customer need.

Some service systems allow for users to indicate their needs via aninteractive voice response (IVR) system that allows users to select menuitems via voice or by dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones that aregenerated by a phone or other device. However, many users incorrectlyindicate their needs or simply override the menu and request immediateconnection to a service agent (e.g., by pressing “0” or saying “speak toagent”). Accordingly, user needs are largely unknown when an agentreceives a contact event, and service agents must still be capable ofhandling a wide variety of customer needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are increasingly used tohandle the flood of customer contacts that a company receives, and suchsystems are largely deficient because they are unable to handle theincreased complexity created by multi-channel contacts and such systemsare unable to efficiently interact with the wide variety of outdatedlegacy systems associated with each given company. Moreover,conventional CRM systems are unable to efficiently assist customerservice agents with handling customer contacts because conventional CRMsystems are unable to understand the meaning of customer requests andare therefore unable to effectively aid customer service agents inaddressing customer needs. In other words, conventional CRM systemscannot adequately identify and classify customer needs or issues andtherefore cannot automatically improve the process of handling customercontacts without operator intervention.

In view of the foregoing, a need exists for an improved customer servicesystem and method in an effort to overcome the aforementioned obstaclesand deficiencies of conventional customer service systems.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 a is an exemplary top-level network diagram illustrating anembodiment of a customer service system, wherein the customer servicesystem includes a system server, a user device and an agent device.

FIG. 1 b is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of the systemserver of FIG. 1 a.

FIGS. 2-4 are exemplary detailed network diagrams illustrating analternative embodiment of the customer service system of FIG. 1 a.

FIG. 5 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationssupported by the customer service system of FIG. 1 a, wherein thecommunications occur among the user device, system server, and agentdevice during a text-based user contact event.

FIG. 6 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationssupported by the customer service system of FIG. 1 a, wherein thecommunications occur among the user device, system server, and agentdevice during a voice-based user contact event.

FIG. 7 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationssupported by the customer service system of FIG. 1 a, wherein thecommunications occur among the system server and agent device during auser contact event.

FIGS. 8-11 illustrate exemplary embodiments of an agent interface forthe agent device of FIG. 1.

It should be noted that the figures are not drawn to scale and thatelements of similar structures or functions are generally represented bylike reference numerals for illustrative purposes throughout thefigures. It also should be noted that the figures are only intended tofacilitate the description of the preferred embodiments. The figures donot illustrate every aspect of the described embodiments and do notlimit the scope of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Since currently-available customer service systems are unable toadequately determine customer needs and select most-qualified agents toaddress the specific needs of customers, a customer service system thatleverages intelligent and continuous semantic analysis and determinationof customer needs can prove desirable and provide a basis for a widerange of customer service applications, such as providing enhancedguidance and resources to service agents and providing an enhancedability to select service agents that are best suited to handle specificcustomers and specific customer needs. For example, there is a need fornovel customer service systems that can efficiently manage and leverageconventionally separate tools such as semantics, statistics, intelligentbusiness process management, and automatic speech recognition.Additionally, there is a need for innovative people-centered technologythat improves experiences and outcomes for customers and service agentsalike. This result can be achieved, according to one embodimentdisclosed herein, by a customer service system 100 as illustrated inFIG. 1.

Turning to FIG. 1, the customer service system 100 is shown in oneembodiment 100A as comprising a user (or customer) device 110, a systemserver 120, an agent device 130, a service center server 140 and acompany server 150 that are operably connected via a network 160.Although shown and described as including a user device 110, a systemserver 120, an agent device 130, a service center server 140 and acompany server 150 with reference to FIG. 1 a for purposes ofillustration only, the customer service system 100 can include anysuitable combination of the user device 110, system server 120, agentdevice 130, service center server 140 and/or company server 150.Additionally, and/or alternatively, in further embodiments, the customerservice system 100 can include a plurality of any of the user device110, system server 120, agent device 130, service center server 140,and/or company server 150.

In various embodiments, the customer service system 100 may be used tosupport customer contact centers for various companies. For example,suppose there is a plurality of separate companies that providecompeting cable television services, and each of these companies needsto handle calls from customers to resolve various customer serviceissues. Each company can have an in-house customer contact center thathandles calls, e-mails, text messages and other communications from aplurality of customers, or such services may be handled by one or moreoutside vendor. The cable television companies may have one or morecompany server 150, and the service centers may have one or more servicecenter server 140. Alternatively, there may be a plurality of servicecenters that each has one or more service center server 140.Additionally, a given service center may have a plurality of serviceagents who work at one or more agent device 130. Customers may have oneor more user device 110. For example, a given customer may have both asmartphone and a tablet computer that could alternatively be used tocommunicate with the system server 130. Additionally, one or more systemserver 120 may facilitate communications and handle data as discussedherein among any of the user devices 110, company servers 150, servicecenter servers 140 and/or agent devices 130.

Although the user device 110 is depicted as being a cellular telephonefor purposes of illustration only, the user device 110 may be anysuitable device in various embodiments, including a smart-phone, laptopcomputer, desktop computer, smart-watch, tablet-computer, e-readerdevice, gaming device, television, headset computing device, or thelike.

Similarly, although the agent device 130 is depicted as a laptopcomputer for purposes of illustration only, the agent device 130likewise may be any suitable device including a smart-phone, laptopcomputer, desktop computer, smart-watch, tablet-computer, e-readerdevice, gaming device, television, headset computing device, or thelike. In some embodiments, a plurality of agent devices 130 may belocated together in physical location as in a conventional servicecenter; however, in further embodiments, agent devices 130 may belocated in disparate locations compared to each other. Agent devices 130may be associated with a single service center server 140 in someembodiments, but may not be in further embodiments.

The servers 120, 140, 150 may be any suitable server or group of serversin various embodiments and can include a cloud-based server system. Insome embodiments, the company server 150 and service center server 140may be at least partially integrated into the same server and/or performany functions of the other as described herein. Similarly, the systemserver 120 may perform the functions of one or both of the servicecenter server 140 and/or company server 150. Stated somewhatdifferently, the service center server 140 and/or company server 150 maybe absent in some embodiments.

The network 160 may comprise one or more suitable networks in variousembodiments, including wireless and/or wired networks that can includethe Internet, a Wi-Fi network (i.e., an IEEE 802.11x wireless network),a Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), a near-fieldnetwork, a telephone network, a cellular telephone network, or the like.Additionally, in some embodiments, devices and servers discussed hereincan be connected in any suitable way and/or in any conventional manner.For example, in an embodiment where a plurality of agent devices 130 arelocated at a physical location, these agent devices 130 may be operablyconnected to a service center server 140 via a LAN, and the servicecenter server 140 may be connected to the Internet or other suitablenetworks.

A system server 120 can be operable to perform any of the functionsdescribed herein in any suitable way, in any suitable configuration. Onenon-limiting example embodiment of a system server 120 is depicted inFIG. 1 b. Turning to FIG. 1 b, the server system 120 is shown ascomprising a channel hub 121, a semantic engine 122, and an adaptive appengine 123. FIGS. 2-4 illustrate another embodiment of the customerservice system 100 and depict the interconnectivity of various modulesand databases that can be present in the customer service system 100B.

For purposes of clarity, the customer service system 100B is broken intothree portions in FIGS. 2-4, respectively, with connections andrelationships spanning between the figures. For example, circle elementsA and B in FIG. 2 indicate connection with circle elements A and B inFIG. 4; circle element C in FIG. 2 indicates connection with circleelement C in FIG. 3; and circle elements D and E in FIG. 3 indicateconnection with circle elements D and E in FIG. 4.

Additionally, the system server 120 is depicted in FIGS. 2-4 encompassedby a dashed line having arrow heads that indicate continuation andconnection of the line in respective figures, and having a connectivityrelationship corresponding to the circle elements A-E discussed above.Accordingly, databases, components and modules that make up the systemserver 120 are defined by the line that spans FIGS. 2-4 as described infurther detail herein.

Accordingly, as depicted in FIGS. 2-4 collectively, the system server120 can interact with one or more communication channels 205, 210 thatare included in the network 160 (FIG. 1). For example, the user device110 can communicate with the system server 120 via text channels 205that can include short message service (SMS), Whatsapp(www.whatsapp.com), Twitter (www.Twitter.com), e-mail, a web form, textchat, Facebook (www.Facebook.com), Google+ (plus.google.com), or thelike. The user device 110 can alternatively communicate with the systemserver 120 via voice channels 210.

In some embodiments, the system server 120 can host an online engagementportal 39, through which a user device 110 can directly interact withthe system server 120 via the Internet. For example, the onlineengagement portal 39 can be operable to support online chatcommunication and can also be configured to provide for scheduling for acallback or other contact via a preferred communication channel throughinteraction with a callback schedule repository 40.

The callback schedule repository 40 can be connected to a callbackmanager module 41 that is configured to contact (or attempt contactwith) a user device 110 according to schedules defined by a callbackschedule repository 40, which can transfer the contact event orattempted contact to a service queue router 9. For example, a customercan employ a user device 110 to request a customer service contact, andthe customer can define a preferred contact method, which can be viaphone, e-mail, text, Twitter, or the like. The system server 120 canthen select a customer service agent to perform this requested contactand facilitate an agent device 130 (FIGS. 1 a and 4) in handling thisrequested contact as discussed herein.

Communication between the system server 120 and user device 110 can berealized by a module channel adapter 4, which can comprise a connectormodule 5, a peer module 6, and contact enrichment module 7. Theconnector module 5 can be responsible for consuming communication datafrom various communication channels of the network 160 and convert suchdata into events for the peer module 6. The connector module 5 can usedifferent strategies such as polling and streaming, depending on thespecific communication channel 205, 210 of the network 160 or the typeof communication data type generated. In some embodiments, the connectormodule 5 represents the first component that interfaces with one or moreof the various communication channels 205, 210 of the network 160 usingAPIs exposed by the specific channel platform.

In some embodiments, the connector module 5 is responsible formaintaining open text communication between a softphone 14 and thecommunication channels 205, 210 to facilitate the communication with theuser device 110. For example, the softphone 14 can be a software moduleconfigured for making telephone, cellular or Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) callsover the network 160 instead of using a hardware component, or can use asoftware module to communicate with text channels 205 in a uniform way.

The peer module 6 can be responsible for adapting communication eventsprovided by the connector module 5 and can create contact events andstore such contact events into a contact status repository 8. Forexample, if a user (or customer) sends an SMS text message to the systemserver 120, this SMS text message can trigger the generation of acontact event. In other words, when a customer contacts the systemserver 120 via a user device 110, a contact event can be generated thatallows for a service agent to respond via an agent device 130 (FIGS. 1 aand 4).

Contact events can be enriched with suitable data, as discussed herein,by a contact enricher 7, which can be configured for treating, addingto, or augmenting communication data and applying an enrichment processbefore making such data available to other modules. Enrichment cancomprise identifying a user profile associated with a contact event.User data can include one or more of a user name, purchase history,payment history, account balance, user preferences, user age, userlocation, or the like. Such user data can be associated with the contactevent and can be included as a portion of contact event data. Forexample, if a user sends an SMS text message to the system server 120,contact data may initially only include the text from the message and anidentifier, such as a phone number, of the sender. Enrichment of suchcontact data can include identifying a user profile based on the phonenumber or information provided in the text of the message. Accordingly,information associated with the user profile can be included in contactdata and used by the system server 120 to assist a service agent inbetter responding to the issue or question provided in the text message.

In some embodiments, enrichment can comprise obtaining data from acompany server 150 or other server that is outside the system server120. As depicted in FIG. 4, a company server 150 can include legacysystems 415 such as a billing module 420, a fidelity (or loyaltyprogram) module 425, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) module 430and/or a provisioning module 435. Additionally, as depicted in FIG. 3, acompany server 150 can comprise a Customer Relationship Management (CRM)module 310 or customer details database (or application) 315.

For example, as discussed herein, the system server 120 can support aplurality of companies by supporting customer contact centers for theplurality of companies. However, each company can have separate systemsthat store data that may be leveraged by the system server 120.Accordingly, in some embodiments the system server 120 can interfacewith one or more company server 150 associated with a given company.Company servers 150 can store proprietary information about thecompany's customers and the internal processes of the business. Suchinformation can be accessed by the system server 120 as necessary.

The enrichment process can involve systems such as a semantic classifier16 and/or sentiment module 17 that are part of the semantic engine 122as depicted in FIG. 3. The semantic classifier 16 and/or sentimentmodule 17 assist and support an agent routing strategy 12 (shown in FIG.2). In various embodiments, the semantic engine 112 can be leveraged bythe contact enricher 7 (shown in FIG. 2) to analyze the text or voicedata provided by the communication channels or by external LVCSR/ASRSystems 2 (i.e., Large Vocabulary Continuous SpeechRecognition/Automated Speech Recognition) to provide an automatic orsemi-automatic management of contact events and to provide or generatedata for handling of contact events.

As discussed in more detail herein, the semantic engine 112 can rank andsuggest relevant information and documents for contact event handlingvia a semantic search and discovery module 18 (shown in FIG. 3) thatindexes information stored in knowledge bases 305 (shown in FIG. 3). Asemantic classifier module 16 (shown in FIG. 3) can apply one or moretypes of classification to communication data, which can includeidentification of information used later by service queue router 9(shown in FIG. 2) and can include generation of classifications usedinternally by the business rule engine 22 (shown in FIG. 4) or usedexternally by the CRM system 310 (shown in FIG. 3). As shown in FIG. 3,the semantic classifier 16 can use a classification logic repository 19and an ontology repository 20 to perform concept extraction andinference to determine if text data or voice data indicates orcorresponds to a defined customer need.

For example, in various embodiments, the system server 110 can beconfigured to apply semantic analysis to text data or voice datareceived in association with a contact event, which can include textdata or voice data sent by a user device 110 via any suitablecommunication channel 205, 210. Such data can include voice data thathas been converted into text or voice or text data communicated from anagent device 130. Accordingly, text or speech that is communicated by auser via a user device 110, or communicated by a service agent via anagent device 130, can receive semantic analysis. Results of such asemantic analysis can be used in handling a contact event at any stageof the contact event.

Semantic analysis can be of any suitable form, including, but notlimited to, formal semantics such as determining logical aspects ofmeaning, such as sense, reference, implication, and logical form;lexical semantics, which can include determination of word meanings andword relations; and/or conceptual semantics, which include determinationof the cognitive structure of meaning. In various embodiments, semanticanalysis refers to any meaning-driven intelligence. For example, when auser sends an e-mail to the system server 120, semantic analysis can beused to determine what the user wants, and other context that caninclude the emotional state of the user. Determining what a user wantsor what a user's issue can be done by comparing the text, or comparingthe meaning of the text, to a plurality of classified resolutions,issues and/or topics and ranking these classifications based on abest-match to the text provided. In various embodiments, suchclassifications can be hierarchical, a list, or the like.

Emotional state semantic analysis can include a determination of whetherthe user is mad, upset, happy, excited, confused, frustrated, or thelike. Additionally, emotional state can also be determined in relationto things. For example, the user may be angry at the company, may befrustrated with a specific product, may have questions about an account,may dislike a specific employee, or may be excited about a certainpromotion.

Semantic engines, or the like, may be complex or simple and may includesimple keyword identification, statistical analysis, or may include amore robust artificial intelligence (AI) module. For example, a neuralnetwork, associative memory, support vector machine, decision tree,Bayesian network, or the like may be trained via supervised orunsupervised learning to perform various tasks that are part of semanticanalysis. Such an algorithm may be provided suitable training data oftext that has been coded with emotional states, meaning, context and/orother suitable semantic data which trains the algorithm to performsemantic analysis on new input data.

Returning to FIG. 2, the system server 120 may also comprise a speechcharacterization module 3 that is operable to determine voicecharacteristics to further provide enrichment of the contact data andprovide for improved handing of a contact event. In contrast toanalyzing text that has been generated from speech data, speech data canbe directly analyzed by a speech characterization engine to determinecharacteristics of the speech of a user. For example, speechcharacterization may be used to determine emotional state, age, gender,impairment due to drugs or alcohol, race, cultural background, or thelike.

As discussed above, speech characterization, or the like, may be complexor simple, or may include a more robust artificial intelligence module.Such an algorithm may be provided suitable training data of speech thathas been coded with speaker characteristics, emotional states, meaning,context and/or other suitable semantic or speech characterization datawhich trains the algorithm to perform speech characterization orsemantic analysis on new input speech data.

Returning to FIG. 2, the contact status repository 8 stores contactevents and information about contact event state for the duration of thecontact event. The contact status repository 8 can be consumed by aservice queue router 9 that makes determinations based on informationfrom the contact status repository 8 and can route a contact event to aselected Automatic Contact Distribution (ACD) address 10. ACD addresses10 map agents associated with certain semantic analysis outputs that maybe selected for a given contact event by the service queue router 9. Forexample, a contact event is queued to an ACD address 10 by the servicequeue router 9 depending on many factors such as contact event priorityand contact event topic attributes, contact event emotional attributes,or the like. Each ACD address 10 component provides information aboutthe number of contacts queued, last contact queued and agent devices 130logged on to the system server 120 and agent devices 130 indicated asbeing active or ready to receive a contact event.

A service queue monitor module 44 is operable to monitor the states ofservice queues, which can provide a unified view of the channel hub 121.Such a unified view may be useful to a supervisor or administrator ofthe system server 120. The service queue monitor module 44 receivesinformation from the ACD addresses 10 components that can include queueload, saturation and the global agent state. An ACD blending managerbroker module 11 can play a role of intermediary among ACD addresses 10by using information provided by an agent skill repository 13, agentrouting strategy 12 and ACD addresses 10 in order to select an agent androute a contact event to a selected agent device 130. The agent skillrepository 13 can store information about the skills and attributes of aplurality of agents.

In various embodiments, it may be desirable to select an agent to handlea given contact event based on various characteristics of the contactevent. For example, a company that provides cable television service mayreceive contact events from customers who want to modify their account(e.g., change their services, add a subscription package, or the like)and the company may also receive contact events from customers that wantto troubleshoot hardware. Some agents may have a more technicalbackground and proficiency with such systems that are better suited tosolving and troubleshooting hardware difficulties, and such agents maybe selected when a determination has been made that a contact eventrelates to hardware difficulties. On the other hand, other agents may bespecialized and have deep knowledge of the services and packagesavailable from the company and may be better suited to handle accountmodification contact events. Similarly, some agents may be better suitedto handle contact events where the customer is irate, and such agentsmay be selected when a determination has been made that a given contactevent involves an irate customer. Additionally, an agent may be matchedwith a contact event based on gender, age, demographic, race, and/orethnicity of a customer associated with a given contact event.

In some embodiments, service agents may handle contact eventsexclusively for a single company, whereas in other embodiments, serviceagents may handle contact events for a plurality of companies. Forexample, the system server 120 may support communication event handlingfor a plurality of companies that provide cable television services, andinstead of services agents only handling contact events from one ofthese companies, service agents may handle contact events from both ofthese companies. This may be desirable because service agents cantherefore specialize in certain types of service events or certain typesof customers, where the system server 120 can allow service agents tomore easily adapt to differences in contact event handling betweencompanies.

Referring again to FIG. 2, an ACD blending manager broker module 11 cangive priority to different communications channels 205, 210 of thenetwork 160. In some embodiments a priority rule may include giving ahigher priority to voice channels 210 over text channels 205. In anotherembodiment, top priority may be given to synchronous contact events(e.g., a phone call or online chat); lower priority to semi-synchronous(e.g., social network posts or messages) and lowest priority toasynchronous contact events (e.g., e-mail, SMS).

For example, in various embodiments a given agent may be allowed tohandle a plurality of semi-synchronous or asynchronous text-basedcontact events because such contact events may include substantial timebetween messages of the agent and customer. However, for synchronouscontact events, the agent may be required to address this contact eventimmediately over semi-synchronous or asynchronous contact events becausesynchronous contact events like a phone call or chat require continuousand real-time contact with a customer. In other words, the ACD blendingmanager broker module 11 can be configured to synchronize the contactevents from various telephony servers and intermediate assignment of thecontact event to a service agent and prioritize events.

Additionally, the ACD blending manager broker module 11 may act asbroker between an Automatic Call Distributor and/or an Interactive VoiceResponse (ACD/IVR) module 215 and ACD Addresses 10 to affect the contactevent assignment. For example, a user may initiate a voice contact eventwith the system server 120 and first encounter an ACD/IVR module 215,which may be associated with any of the servers 120, 140, 150 inaccordance with various embodiments. The user may use voice, button orother inputs to select various portions of an audio menu provided andsuch selections may be used in a determination of an agent that is bestsuited to handle the contact event. For example, a user may hear a menuthat inquires about the nature of the user contact. The menu can ask theuser if he has a billing inquiry or if he has a shipping inquiry, andthe user may be able to speak a selection or push a button on the userdevice 110 to select one of the two options. Such a selection may bepart of the contact event data that is used to select a suitable agent.

The soft phone module 14 (shown in FIG. 4) can be a software phone andcommunication component that is used by an agent device 130 tocommunicate an operational state to the ACD blending manager broker 11that will assign a contact event to an agent device 130. For example, invarious embodiments, an agent may be assigned up to a certain number ofsemi-synchronous or asynchronous contact events simultaneously and up toone synchronous contact event at a time. An agent device 130 that hasreached its maximum allowed state may report an unavailable operationalstate and not be assigned additional contact events or contact events ofa certain type. Additionally, if no agents are logged into a given agentdevice 130 or if an agent indicates unavailability due to being on abreak, wanting to take a break, or end of a shift, the operational stateof the agent device 130 may be reported as unavailable.

As shown in FIG. 4, a business integration services module 27 providesintegration components and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)patterns implementation, and is configured to retrieve, transform andstore business data, via data source connectors 28.

The data source connectors 28 can be software components configured torealize an interface to existing applications, services, and databasesystems, such as legacy systems 415 including, but not limited to,billing 420, fidelity 425, ERP 430, provisioning 435 and/or the customerdetails repository 315 and CRM 310 (shown in FIG. 3).

A virtual meta model module 29 can be an abstraction layer of metadataof business objects providing a renderer 37 and a decision controller 32the ability to treat business data in a uniform way, regardless of thedata source connector 28 that produced or retrieved the data. Thedecision controller 32 can be a controller that handles business anduser interface (UI) events, and executes transactional actions stored ina dedicated controller repository 31 used to customize UI events bywriting business event handlers to react both to front-end and back-endevents.

The adaptive app engine component 123 is configured to host a unifiedadaptive user interface 36 that provides, updates and configures a userinterface 800 (shown in FIGS. 8-11) for the agent device 130 via aninternet browser or other suitable dynamic presentation technologies,using the renderer 37. The user interface 800 can be initially renderedusing the information provided by an agent role repository 410 (that maybe present on the service center server 140 or other server 120, 150 insome embodiments), the agent profile repository 38 and/or the UI modelrepository 35. The user interface can be dynamically adapted by abusiness rule engine 22 and a business process manager 26.

The UI model repository 35 can store definitions of dynamic views of thedata and the external systems that can be expressed in a generic userinterface modelling language. External systems can be modeled in datasource connectors 28. The business rule engine 22 can be configured toexpress business rules that affect the behavior of the user interface800 (e.g., combining knowledge from business data with the semanticconcepts extracted by the AI semantic engine 122 (shown in FIG. 3)). Ameta model enrichment rule repository 23 can store and define rules thatexpress enrichment of business data according to business analysis. A UImodel rule repository 24 can store and define rules that condition userinterface presentation according to a defined operational flow. Aprocess selection rule repository 25 can store and define rules thatselect the possible business processes in the operational flow,according to a contact event classification that is determined by thesemantic engine 122.

A business process manager module 26 can be configured to be a workflowand business process management engine that enables one or more agentdevices 130 to perform either human tasks (by an agent operator) orautomated activities (by an AI process or rule based automation) tocomplete a business process. A process definition repository 30 canstore and define a plurality of business process definitions that may beexpressed in standard business process notation or other suitableformat.

The agent profile repository 38 stores the agent profiles, which mayinclude an agent skill set, or the like. Additionally, the system server120 integrates with the external agent role repository to gaininformation about agent authentication and authorization.

A semantic contact history repository 33 may be configured to collectinformation about the entire contact event lifecycle beginning from theengagement of the user via a user device 110 through a communicationchannel 205, 210 of the network 160 up to the contact event closureincluding all the intermediate steps addressing and handling the contactevent as described herein. A multichannel semantic Business Intelligence(BI) module 34 can be configured to act as an internal BI dashboard thatgenerates analysis and report views of the information stored by thesemantic contact history repository 33, external legacy systems 415 andthe like. The BI module may be a hosted on any of the servers 120, 140,150 in accordance with various embodiments.

FIG. 5 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationsbetween the user device 110, system server 120, and agent device 130during a text-based user contact event. The communications begin, at505, where contact text is generated at the user device 110 and sent tothe system server 120 along with contact text metadata, at 510. Forexample, as discussed herein, a user (or customer) may initiate acontact event by sending an e-mail, sending an SMS text message, makinga post on Facebook, sending a tweet, or the like. Contact metadata mayinclude a user name, account number, phone number, e-mail address,time-stamp, IP address, or the like.

At 515, semantic characteristics of the contact text are determined and,at 520, user data is retrieved. In accordance with some embodiments,user data may be retrieved in various ways. In one embodiment, a userprofile may be identified based on the contact text and/or the contactmetadata. For example, a user may indicate an account number, user name,or the like in the contact text, and this information may be used toidentify a user profile associated with the user that sent the contacttext. Contact metadata may also include information that can be used tolookup or search for a user profile. Accordingly, a user profile mayinclude data such as one or more user name, e-mail address, phonenumber, account number, account profile, and the like. A user profilemay be stored on any of the servers 120, 140, 150 in variousembodiments.

Returning to the communications, a contact need classification isdetermined, at 525, based on the semantic characteristics and the userdata. In some embodiments, there can be a plurality of hierarchical needclassifications that correspond to various needs, issues or problemsthat users may have and/or that can be addressed by a service agent viaan agent device 130. For example, such need classifications may begeneral such as billing issues, complaints, technical questions, or thelike. Need classifications may also be specific to certain products,geographic locations, promotions, marketing campaigns, complaints, orthe like. As discussed herein, one or more classification need can beselected and presented based on a best-match comparison to the semanticcharacteristics and/or user data.

At 530, a service agent is selected based on a need classification,semantic characteristics and user data. For example, as discussedherein, certain skills or attributes of certain service agents may makethese service agents better capable than other service agents ofhandling certain contact events, and therefore a most desirable serviceagent can be selected based on characteristics of a contact event, aneed classification, semantic characteristics and/or user data.Selection may also be based on other factors, including agentavailability, agent workload, or the like.

In various embodiments, it may be desirable for actions to occurautomatically without user action or intervention. For example, insteadof requiring a human operator to facilitate semantic analysis of text orvoice data received from a user device 110, identify a user accountassociated with a contact event, classify a customer need, or provide aservice agent with information useful in handling a contact event, itmay be desirable for the system server 120 to automatically perform someor all of these functionalities without operator interaction.Accordingly, fewer operators may be required to handle contact eventsand relevant data and updates to an agent interface may be providedfaster than if human operators are involved in such steps. Therefore, inaccordance with some embodiments, any of the steps or functionalitiesdiscussed herein may be suitably performed without human interaction orintervention.

At 535, a contact request is sent to the agent device 130, where thecontact request is accepted, at 540. A contact request acceptance issent back to the system server 120, at 545, and contact event data issent to the agent device, at 550. Contact event data can comprise anydata associated with a contact event including a need classification,semantic characteristics, user data, contact text, contact metadata,agent interface data, and the like.

At 555, an agent interface at the agent device 130 is modified based onthe contact event data, and, at 560, a portion of the contact event datais presented. Agent interfaces, modification of agent interfaces, andpresentation of contact event data are discussed herein in reference toFIGS. 8-11.

FIG. 6 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationsbetween a user device 110, system server 120, and agent device 130during a voice-based user contact event. The communications begin, at605, where a voice contact is initiated and contact audio data andcontact metadata is sent to the system server 120. For example, asdiscussed herein, a user device 110 may communicate with the systemserver 120 via phone, VOIP, video, or the like, which may include audiodata. Such audio data may be received in real-time or may be received ona delay (e.g., as a voicemail message or e-mail attachment).Additionally, such contact data may include contact metadata such as auser name, account number, phone number, e-mail address, time-stamp, IPaddress, or the like.

In an optional step, at 615, IVR selections are determined based on theaudio data. For example, a user can optionally be presented with an IVRmenu and make various selections as discussed herein. In anotheroptional step, at 620, speech characteristics of the audio data aredetermined. At 625, audio data is converted to speech text, which may bedone in real time or on a delayed basis depending on hardware and/orsoftware capabilities.

At 630, user data is obtained. In accordance with some embodiments, userdata may be retrieved in various ways. In one embodiment, a user profilemay be identified based on the speech text, audio data and/or thecontact metadata. For example, a user may indicate an account number,user name, or the like in the audio data, and this information may beused to identify a user profile associated with the user that providedthe audio data. Contact metadata may also include information that canbe used to lookup or search for a user profile.

At 635, a contact need classification is determined. The contact needclassification may be based on semantic characteristics, speechcharacteristics, IVR selections and/or user data. Semanticcharacteristics may be determined based on semantic analysis of thespeech text or direct semantic analysis of the audio data.

At 640, an available service agent is selected based on a needclassification, semantic characteristics, speech characteristics, IVRselections and/or user data. For example, as discussed herein, certainskills or attributes of certain service agents may make these serviceagents better capable that other service agents of handling certaincontact events, and therefore a most-desirable service agent may beselected based on characteristics of a contact event, including a needclassification, semantic characteristics, speech characteristics, IVRselections and/or user data. Selection may also be based on otherfactors, including agent availability, agent workload, or the like. At645, a contact request is sent to the agent device 130. In variousembodiments, further communications can include the communications likethose depicted at 545, 550, 555 and/or 560 of FIG. 5.

FIG. 7 is a data flow diagram illustrating example communicationsbetween the system server 120 and agent device 130 during a user contactevent. The communications begin at 705, where a service agent inputscontact notes into an agent interface, and, at 710, contact notes datais sent to the system server 120. At 715, semantic characteristics ofthe contact text are determined, and, at 720, user data is obtained. Acontact need classification is determined, at 725, based on semanticcharacteristics and user data, and, at 730, contact event data is sentto the agent device 130. At, 735 the agent interface is modified basedon the contact data, and, at 740, a portion of the contact data ispresented.

For example, in some embodiments, a text, audio or video-based contactevent may be assigned to a service agent before semanticcharacteristics, user data, and a need classification can be determinedby the system server 120, or data may not be available to determine orobtain semantic characteristics, user data, and/or a needclassification. Additionally, it may be desirable to update such dataeven where semantic characteristics, user data, a need classification,and the like has been determined or generated. Accordingly, data that isinput into an agent device 130 may be processed during a contact eventto update or generate semantic characteristics, user data, a needclassification, or the like. This may be desirable because as moreinformation becomes available during a contact event, or needs changeduring a contact event, the system server 120 can adapt to such changesand additional information.

In some embodiments, an agent interface may comprise a notes field,wherein the agent can type notes, impressions or search queries that canbe processed by the system server 120. In further embodiments, textdata, audio data, or video data may be processed in real-time or on adelayed basis during any phase of a contact event, which text data,audio data, or video data may include text data, audio data, or videodata generated by the user or the agent.

Monitoring communications made by a service agent may be desirable forquality control of contact event handling and to assist a service agentduring a contact event. For example, where a service agent makescommunications that are perceived to be hostile or angry, a supervisorcan be alerted to intervene during the contact event or at a later time.

FIGS. 8-11 illustrate various embodiments of an agent interface 800 inaccordance with embodiments 800A, 800B, 800C, 800D. Turning to FIG. 8,one embodiment of the interface 800 comprises a communication channelfield 805 that can display a plurality of possible communicationchannels. The interface 800 also includes a text communication field 810and a text input field 815 that allows a service agent to input a replymessage to a user. For example, as depicted in FIG. 8, a customer hassent a tweet to the system server 120, and the contact event is assignedto an agent device 130 that presents the text of the tweet in the textcommunication field 810.

The interface 800 may also comprise a user data presentation field 820that may display available user data that may be present in a userprofile or that may be input by the service agent. For example, in someembodiments, user data may be dynamically gathered by the system server120 by querying the company server 150, including legacy systems 415, orthe like. The interface 800 can also include a need field 825 and a needclassification selection field 830. For example, as discussed herein,one or more need classification may be determined based on user data,contact metadata, contact text, semantic characteristics, speechcharacteristics, a determined meaning of contact text, or the like. Asdepicted in FIG. 8, two need classifications can be presented to theagent, and the agent may select a need classification, which may providethe agent with additional information, functionalities, assistance orresources as depicted in FIGS. 9-11.

Turning to FIG. 9, another embodiment 800B of the interface 800 isdepicted, wherein the agent has selected a displayed need classification830 (shown in bold), which selection causes a knowledge base field 910to be displayed that provides links to various documents, guides,instructions or other information that is relevant to the selected needclassification. Such a need classification 830 selection further drivesthe customer need resolution based on other data, including channeltype, user profile data, or the like. Accordingly the knowledge basefield 910 displays links, or the like, based on semantic text analysis.Additionally, a system field 920 is presented that provides for accessto system functionalities that allow the service agent to address orresolve the user need as depicted in FIGS. 10 and 11.

Turning to FIG. 10, a system resolution field 1010 is illustrated thatallows the service agent to resolve the user need. For example, asdepicted in FIGS. 8-11, the user is having difficulty with having pointscredited to her account, and the agent can use the agent interface 800to view the user's point balance and account history. The service agentcan choose to approve or reject a user claim based on the serviceagent's judgment and, as depicted in FIG. 11, where the service agentapproves a claim, the agent interface can present a confirmation 1110 toconfirm the selected resolution of the customer need and the contactevent 810.

In various embodiments, the service agent may reply to a customer viathe same communication channel that the customer originally initiatedthe contact event from. For example, as depicted in FIGS. 10 and 11,where a customer initiated a contact event via Twitter, the serviceagent may tweet a response to the customer via Twitter as depicted inthe text communication field 810. However, in some embodiments, theservice agent may reply to a customer via another communication channel.

The described embodiments are susceptible to various modifications andalternative forms, and specific examples thereof have been shown by wayof example in the drawings and are herein described in detail. It shouldbe understood, however, that the described embodiments are not to belimited to the particular forms or methods disclosed, but to thecontrary, the present disclosure is to cover all modifications,equivalents, and alternatives.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for customer contact handling,comprising: receiving contact text and contact metadata from a userdevice; determining semantic characteristics of the contact text basedon semantic analysis of the contact text; identifying a user profilebased on the contact metadata; retrieving user data associated with theidentified user profile; and determining a contact need classificationbased on the semantic characteristics and user data.
 2. The method ofclaim 1, wherein said identifying the user profile is further based onthe contact text.
 3. The method of claim 1, further comprising selectinga service agent based on the contact need classification, semanticcharacteristics, and the user data.
 4. The method of claim 3, furthercomprising providing contact event data to an agent device associatedwith the selected service agent.
 5. The method of claim 4, furthercomprising modifying a contact event interface at the agent device basedon the contact event data.
 6. The method of claim 4, further comprisingmodifying a contact event interface at the agent device based on theuser data and the contact need classification.
 7. The method of claim 6,wherein said modifying the contact event interface comprises presentingat least a portion of the user data and presenting the contact needclassification.
 8. The method of claim 4, further comprising: receivingcontact event note data from the user device; and determining semanticcharacteristics of the contact event note data based on semanticanalysis of the contact event note data.
 9. The method of claim 4,further comprising: receiving contact event text correspondence data;and determining semantic characteristics of the contact event textcorrespondence data based on semantic analysis of the contact event textcorrespondence data.
 10. A method for customer contact handling,comprising: receiving contact audio data and contact metadata from auser device; determining semantic characteristics of the contact audiodata based on semantic analysis of the contact audio data; identifying auser profile based at least on the contact metadata; retrieving userdata associated with the identified user profile; and determining atleast one contact need classification based on the sematiccharacteristics and user data.
 11. The method of claim 10, furthercomprising determining speech characteristics of the contact audio data.12. The method of claim 10, wherein said determining the semanticcharacteristics of the contact audio data comprises generating contacttext based on the contact audio data.
 13. The method of claim 10,wherein said identifying the user profile is further based on thecontact audio data.
 14. The method of claim 10, further comprisingselecting a service agent based on the semantic characteristics and theuser data.
 15. A method for customer contact handling, comprising:receiving contact text from a user device; determining semanticcharacteristics of the contact text based on semantic analysis of thecontact text; and determining at least one contact need classificationbased on the sematic characteristics and user data.
 16. The method ofclaim 15, further comprising identifying a user profile based on thecontact text.
 17. The method of claim 15, further comprising selecting aservice agent based on the contact need classification.
 18. The methodof claim 17, further comprising providing contact event data to an agentdevice associated with the selected service agent and modifying acontact event interface at the agent device based on the contact eventdata.
 19. The method of claim 18, further comprising: receiving contactevent note data from the user device; and determining semanticcharacteristics of the contact event note data based on semanticanalysis of the contact event note data.
 20. The method of claim 18,further comprising: receiving contact event text correspondence data;and determining semantic characteristics of the contact event textcorrespondence data based on semantic analysis of the contact event textcorrespondence data.